In an Arab hair-salon in Israel, the director installs a camera over the washing-basin. As she washes their hair, she converses candidly with the salon’s clients – Arabs and Jews – on Israeli politics, life and love.

Directors’s Statement

Although born and raised in Haifa (Israel), as a Jew, I don&#39;t remember ever chatting with its Arab citizens, fulfilling the coexistence that this city is so very proud of. As a documentary filmmaker, the Arab community in Haifa has attracted me for years: many films are made about the Israeli conflict and the occupation. I felt I wanted to scrutinise a quiet front, one which symbolises coexistence, and to explore, right there, a community of minorities.

Haifa was also a natural choice for me, since it’s my hometown – where my identity begins. I moved between the desire to get to know Arab citizens in person and a passion to explore my own complex identity through these encounters; and between my instinctive fear when I hear Arabic, which is the result of growing up in Israel, and the guilt I carry towards a community which I believe was, and still is, treated unequally.

I sought a place where I would be able to build an intimacy with the subjects, and the decision to work for a hairdresser seemed perfect because of the physical connection with the women and the traffic of clientele that such a place offers. I wished not to show up in a location and shoot, but to become a temporary resident.

This is one of the cornerstones of my method: one which embraces the ethnographic value of a researcher that lives the topic, not studying from a distance.

I went to Haifa to make a film about Arab women, expecting to hear about their difficulties in Israel. I ended up with a different film: within a complex reality, I found a story of friendship, acceptance and respect between Arab and Jewish women, and I left there not only with a film, but also – with hope.